The spaces may not have taken up a large area, however their impact was significant in reminding people to rethink their time spent at their own desks.

The spaces range from an executive office and conference room to a break room and cubicle space complete with filing cabinets. The foliage-covered offices are located in Denver’s 16th Street business district. They were sponsored by the eco footwear company KEEN and built with the help of a local green roof company. Tres Birds used all natural greenery and spent a lot of time hand sewing sedum to make faux quilts to drape over the office furniture to give the scene an overgrown look. All non-living props were obtained from secondhand stores, including an old Canon copier, a water cooler, cubicle walls, a golf set, computers, kitschy knickknacks, coffee mugs, and more. When the installation was over, all of the vegetation was recycled or reused, and the office furniture was redonated to secondhand stores.

It often seems like our working worlds are dominated more by our computer systems, than the natural systems that surround us, so it is nice to see a conceptual piece that is fighting back against this trend. Tres Birds Workshop state:

“Domination implies taking over. If we had it our way, natural systems would dominate entirely. Natural systems operate in perfect efficiency… The further we stray from connections with nature, the more alien we become.”